Jar of Peaches, c. 1866. Oil on canvas, 55.5 × 46 cm.
Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden.
Train in the Snow, the Locomotive, 1875.
Oil on canvas, 59 × 78 cm. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
Madame Louis Joachim Gaudibert, 1868.
Oil on canvas, 216.5 × 138.5 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Among the eldest of the Impressionists’ contemporaries were two masters who played a fundamental role in the elaboration of their idea of painting. They were Eugène Delacroix and Gustave Courbet.
Delacroix showed them that colour could be used to paint shadows, that a colour changed in relation to the colour next to it, and that white did not exist in nature, as it is always tinged with reflections. Of course, the future Impressionists could have observed all that in certain works by the old masters from whom Delacroix had learned, such as Titian, Veronese, and Rubens, but Delacroix was a part of their own world and his painting was still creating controversy. The great battle between the Romantics and the Neo-classicists was not over yet. At one point Monet and Bazille even rented a studio near Delacroix’s residence on Place Fürstenberg where they could see him in his garden.
Delacroix taught them to see the richness of colour in nature. As Bazille wrote to his parents about Delacroix: “You will not believe how I am learning to see in his paintings; one of these sessions is worth a month of work.” The Impressionists also encountered the art of Gustave Courbet, the ‘Realist’ painting contemporary life and fighting the conventions of Neo-classicism. Courbet often used a palette knife instead of a paintbrush to lay thick strokes of paint on canvas, demonstrating a degree of freedom in paint handling that had never been seen before.
Under all these influences, Impressionist painting was taking form, bit by bit. The future Impressionists believed they were making a clean break with academic painting when they left Gleyre’s studio.
Eleven years later, they were developing a new concept of painting as they worked en plein-air (in the open air). The time had come to announce this concept, as well as their independence from official art, and to show their canvasses in the context of their own exhibition.
But organising such an event was not as easy as one might think.
Up until then, there was only one venue for exhibiting contemporary art in France: the Salon. Founded in the 17th century during the reign of Louis XIV by his prime minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the exhibition was inaugurated in the Louvre’s Salon carré, hence its name.
Beginning in 1747, the Salon was held biennially in different locations. By the time the future Impressionists appeared on the stage of art, the Salon boasted a two-hundred-year history.
The Red Kerchief, c. 1868–1873. Oil on canvas, 99 × 79.8 cm.
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland.
Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, 1869. Oil on canvas,
100 × 80 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Obviously every painter wanted to exhibit in the Salon, because it was the only way to become known and consequently, to be able to sell paintings. But it was hard to get admitted.
A critical jury made up of teachers from the École des Beaux-Arts selected the works for the exhibition. The Académie des Beaux-Arts (one of the five Academies of the Institut de France) picked the teachers for the jury from among its own members. Furthermore, the teachers in charge of selecting the Salon’s paintings and sculptures would be choosing works made by the same artists they had as students. It was not unusual to see jury members haggling amongst themselves for the right to have the work of their own students admitted.
The Salon’s precepts were extremely rigid and remained essentially unchanged throughout its entire existence.
Traditional genres reigned and scenes taken from Greek mythology or the Bible were in accordance with the themes imposed on the Salon at its inception; only the individual scenes changed according to fashion. Portraiture retained its customary affected look and landscapes had to be ‘composed’, in other words, conceived from the artist’s imagination.
Idealised nature, whether it concerned the female nude, portraiture, or landscape painting, was still a permanent condition of acceptance. The jury sought a high degree of professionalism in composition, drawing, anatomy, linear perspective, and pictorial technique.
An irreproachably smooth surface, created with miniscule brushwork almost indiscernible to the eye, was the standard finish required for admission to the competition.
There was no place in the Salon for the everyday reality young painters were anxious to explore. Finally, there was another, unformulated requirement: the paintings had to appeal to the potential buyers for whom they were made.
The victorious revolution at the end of the 18th century had given rise to a class of nouveaux riches. Former boutique owners who had profited from the revolution built luxurious townhouses in Paris, bought jewels from the most expensive stores on the Rue de la Paix, and bought no less expensive paintings from celebrated Salon painters.
The newly rich had questionable tastes that required some getting used to. It was precisely in the second half of the 19th century that the term ‘Salon painter’ became pejorative, implying a lack of principles and venality, the sort of eagerness to please that was indispensable for commercial success.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bathing on the Seine (La Grenouillère), 1868.
Oil on canvas, 59 × 80 cm. Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillère, 1869.
Oil on canvas, 66.5 × 81 cm. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
La Grenouillère, 1869. Oil on canvas, 74.6 × 99.7 cm.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Wharf of the Louvre, 1867. Oil on canvas, 96.7 × 124.5 cm.
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague.
The very fact of admission to the Salon demonstrated extreme professionalism on the part of the painter and under these circumstances changing his manner of painting and his style was no great feat. It was not unusual to find a Neo-classical composition next to a canvas painted in the spirit of Romanticism by the same artist. It was nevertheless a matter of honour for the Salon to retain its prestige and consequently, to maintain the spirit of Classicism upon which it had been based up until then.
Salon favourites were derisively called pompiers (firemen). The contemporary meaning of this word has been lost over time. It may have stemmed from the constant presence of real firemen in the rooms of the Salon, or it may have been that the shiny headgear of the antique warriors in Salon paintings made one think of firemen.
Or perhaps pompier was an echo of the French word for Pompeii (Pompéi), as the Pompeian lifestyle was frequently depicted in the Salon’s antique compositions. One story attributes the origin of the term to the famous phrase by the academician Gérôme, who said that it was easier to be an arsonist than a fireman. By that the honourable professor meant artists like himself fulfilled the difficult and noble duty of firemen, whereas those who one way or another attacked the foundations of the Salon and the classical ideal of art, naturally seemed like arsonists.
The four former pupils of Gleyre,